🚀 go-pugleaf

Marc Cohen of IBM attempted to post a clarification of some erroneous
statements in my original posting on this subject, an attempt that was
rebuffed by his news reader, whereupon he sent it to me by personal
email. I am distributing his constructive and edifying comments below,
followed by a brief restatement of my situation in light of his
comments. I will post a summary of any further constructive suggestions
that arise from our email correspondence.

--David
Let me try direct mail, since I can't seem to get to the newsgroup
properly.

Marc L. Cohen                  vnet: MLCOHEN at BCRVMPC1
                           internet: mlcohen@bcrvmpc1.vnet.ibm.com
                             e-mail: IBMMAIL(USIB1852)

- - - - - - - - - -    F o r w a r d e d   N o t e    - - - - - - - - - -

Date: Wed, 12 May 93 09:11:29 EDT
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To: <MLCOHEN@BCRVMPC1>
Subject: Undeliverable Mail

vnet.IBM.COM unable to deliver following mail to recipient(s):
    <comp-fonts@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
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   Wed, 12 May 93 09:11:22 EDT
Date: Wed, 12 May 93 09:04:42 EDT
From: "Marc Cohen" <mlcohen@vnet.IBM.COM>
To:   comp-fonts@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Subject: Fonts, Code Pages, Character Sets, OS/2, and you

>From: djbpitt@pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
>Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc,bit.listserv.os2-l,comp.fonts
>Message-ID: <11364@blue.cis.pitt.edu>
>Date: 11 May 93 20:28:27 GMT
>Sender: news+@pitt.edu
>Followup-To: comp.os.os2.misc

>An interesting OS/2 problem involving the items in the subject line has
>just landed in my lap. The description is quite lengthy, as the problem
>seems fairly intricate, but of fundamental importance for the future of
>multilingual text processing within OS/2. At the bottom I ask for
>advice from more experienced users.

The description you have been given is incorrect. I'm not sure where
they got those ideas, but they are not even close to accurate. The two
code pages specified in CONFIG.SYS are used for code page switching of
the entire system. However, at any time a program may set it's own code
page to any of the supported code pages, and output characters in that
code page. The code page/codepoint pair for any character is translated
to a unique glyph number in the 383 glyphs supported by OS/2 (from which
the characters in all of the supported code pages are drawn) and that
glyph number is passed to the OS/2 ATM code. That code then translates
the glyph number into the ATM character name for that glyph, and
searches the font for that character. If the character is not found in
that font, then the character is searched for in the Symbol font.

>From what you have writtent, it sounds like the application was not
switching code pages, i.e. it was writing the characters to the screen
in code page 850, not in the code page you really wanted.

Marc L. Cohen
mlcohen@bcrvmpc1.vnet.ibm.com
-----------------------------------[end of reposting]---------------

My original analysis was that OS/2 was unable to represent characters
that were not part of CP 850. What Marc's explanation reveals is that
OS/2 supports a much larger number of different code pages that the
application can access at will, but, if I understand this entirely, the
inventory of supported characters is nonetheless restricted to the 383
glyphs drawn from assorted code pages plus whatever the Symbol font
contains. In other words, OS/2 indeed does allow me to install a font
with characters it will not allow me to access, but it denies access to
these characters not because they are outside CP 850, but because they
are outside a much more substantial inventory of supported characters.
This is an important distinction, although it seems to confirm that it
is OS/2, rather than DeScribe or any other application, that denies
access to the characters I need.

--David
--
Professor David J. Birnbaum         djbpitt+@pitt.edu [Internet]
The Royal York Apartments, #802     djbpitt@pittvms   [Bitnet]
3955 Bigelow Boulevard              voice: 1-412-687-4653
Pittsburgh, PA  15213  USA          fax:   1-412-624-9714